1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of motion capture and 3-dimensional or higher data display; and more particularly to the creation and display of motion capture data.
2. Description of Related Art
Two-dimensional and 3-dimensional animation and modeling often begins with the use of live subjects. Live subjects are filmed or video taped and key positions on the subject's body or face are marked. The marked locations are filmed and data related to the marked positions are, using a variety of techniques, digitized and entered into a computer. For example, one might wish to record the facial expressions of an actor as a line of dialog is spoken. The x, y, and z coordinates of critical areas of the actor's face are recorded as time (T) passes. This data is then digitized and entered into a computer. The data can then be used to help create an animated version of the actor's facial expressions.
The data representing the actor's facial motions will often have to be displayed and modified in order to achieve the desired final result. Various techniques are presently available to display and modify data corresponding to facial motion. However, presently available software typically only allows individual dimensions of data to be easily displayed at once. What is needed is a system and method which can display 4-dimensional data, for example, x, y, z, and T in a format which can be easily interpreted by a computer operator and which will allow the data to be easily viewed and altered.